MOSCOW, November 11. /TASS/. Certain quarters in the European Union are obsessed with sanctions against Belarus, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin said in reply to a TASS question. 

"There is certain obsession [on the EU’s part]. Possibly, not the whole of the EU, but at least on the part of some so-called activists," he said, when asked about the probability of Western sanctions against Minsk over the migration crisis.

The migration crisis on the Belarusian borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where migrants began to flock in since the beginning of this year, went into high gear on November 8. Several thousand people approached the Polish border on the Belarusian side and tried to cross into Poland. In an attempt to storm the border they broke a barbed wire fence. The EU countries have blamed Minsk for the intentional escalation of the crisis and called for more sanctions. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that in this situation the responsibility rested squarely on the Western countries, whose policies had forced people to flee from war.

European Commission spokesperson Dana Spinant told a news briefing in Brussels on Thursday that the EU’s new sanctions against Minsk would include blacklisting the air carriers whose planes carry migrants.